Separate politics forum

[Tahuti]

Noticed - like probably everyone else regular on OT - that a significant body of OT posts are about politics around the world. What would people here think about it to put politics into a separate forum part of the Colosseum?

I remembered proposing to merge several Colosseum forums due to their lack of use, though I figured this is probably because of a significant amount of posts simply do not have a seperate forum so everyone puts them into OT for a lack of a better alternative.

 

[Synobun]

Asked plenty of times in the past, rejected each time. OT isn't nearly active enough to justify splitting any subject matter off any further than's already been done. Merging into OT has more of a case than splitting off new subjects.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

While some forums split off the U.S. election threads into a separate subforum (temporarily, the closer the time comes to the election itself), politics is basically OT's bread and butter, as it were. Politics creeps into practically everything. On another forum I was accused of being a Republican voter just because I loathe the nuTrek movies.

I will say that I look forward to seeing fewer U.S. election threads, both here and elsewhere. I certainly look forward to seeing less Trump in my daily Canadian newsfeeds.

 

[God of Kings]

The political discussions also make it harder to find threads pertaining to non-political pop culture (some of which are inevitably political in nature anyways) or other non-political discussion.

 

[Tahuti]

Asked plenty of times in the past, rejected each time. OT isn't nearly active enough to justify splitting any subject matter off any further than's already been done. Merging into OT has more of a case than splitting off new subjects.

Eh... OT is the largest forum on CFC in terms of messages as well as discussions.

While some forums split off the U.S. election threads into a separate subforum (temporarily, the closer the time comes to the election itself), politics is basically OT's bread and butter, as it were. Politics creeps into practically everything. On another forum I was accused of being a Republican voter just because I loathe the nuTrek movies.

I will say that I look forward to seeing fewer U.S. election threads, both here and elsewhere. I certainly look forward to seeing less Trump in my daily Canadian newsfeeds.

The political discussions also make it harder to find threads pertaining to non-political pop culture (some of which are inevitably political in nature anyways) or other non-political discussion.

The main issue with not having a separate politics forum is indeed because it turns other topics on OT factually homeless, because these have no other place to go than OT, although OT is de-facto the politics forum. Having a separate politics forum may help make the Colosseum more easier to navigate and make the direction of each of its subforums much clearer.

 

[Synobun]

Eh... OT is the largest forum on CFC in terms of messages as well as discussions.

Only because OT has been around as a condensed catch-all location since the beginning. There are no sequels for OT.

 

[Birdjaguar]

No changes are needed. Political threads should die down if Clinton wins. If Trump wins, god help us all.

 

[Tahuti]

No changes are needed. Political threads should die down if Clinton wins. If Trump wins, god help us all.

Politics feels like the lifeblood of OT, US elections or no. As much as I enjoy OT's topics, including the political ones, the prominence of political threads without a seperate forum crowds out other topics that have no other place, think of threads about philosophy. It also encourages members to be lax in which forum they post, which may also explain why the other Colosseum forums are relatively underused, even if many of the non-political threads would fit there. It's almost as if an 'What music are you listening to?' thread was placed in OT, simply to offset the political threads there.

 

[God of Kings]

Not just that, but threads pertaining to pop culture are also placed in OT as well, causing the Arts & Entertainment thread to rot (though the latter is nowadays primarily used for fanfiction).

 

[tetley]

Something needs to be done about the U.S. election spam. Seems like it needs its own board. When you try to lump it all in one thread, it gets very noisy and you've got 5 subjects going on all at once, all on the election. Having separate threads for separate sub-topics makes sense. Also, I don't think this will ever completely die down. Trump is very controversial, and he will be in office.

 

[Synobun]

Something needs to be done about the U.S. election spam. Seems like it needs its own board. When you try to lump it all in one thread, it gets very noisy and you've got 5 subjects going on all at once, all on the election. Having separate threads for separate sub-topics makes sense. Also, I don't think this will ever completely die down. Trump is very controversial, and he will be in office.

But this is literally the purpose of Off-Topic. Should Civ 6 General Discussion be split up into separate forums if a lot of people happen to be talking about city states?

 

[tetley]

If enough are, and there are enough sub-topics about CS, and it doesn't look like it will die down anytime soon, then yes.

 

[Synobun]

If enough are, and there are enough sub-topics about CS, and it doesn't look like it will die down anytime soon, then yes.

I don't understand the reasoning behind wanting a forum to operate like a social media community group but whatever works for you, I guess. Groups on Facebook are usually dedicated to singular topics, they might provide what you're looking for.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not just that, but threads pertaining to pop culture are also placed in OT as well, causing the Arts & Entertainment thread to rot (though the latter is nowadays primarily used for fanfiction).

*sigh*

If the staff would make a firm rule that arts-related threads have to be posted in the arts forum - and actually enforce that rule - there wouldn't be so much criticism.

At this point, there are a lot of writing-related activities going on in A&E. Some of it involves fanfiction. And there's nothing wrong with fanfiction anyway. There are many professional authors who got their start (and honed their writing skills) doing fanfiction.

I don't appreciate our activities being described as "rot."

 

[Kyriakos]

It is currently very bad in OT, cause there are so many threads on US/Trump. Please consider either linking all of them into one, or make a separate politics subforum to contain them

 

[Birdjaguar]

OT is just fine. Politics is on peoples minds and they want to talk about different aspects of it. Those who are tired of it can start new, non political topics or ignore the political ones. The diversity of OT topics is one of its great strengths. We tried segmentation years ago and it did not work. It is pretty clear that if you want your thread to attract comments, you need to post it in OT. The History, Science and the arts subforums are pretty dead when compared to OT. Science has had 6 threads with one or more posts in November; History 15 and Arts 9.

Communities thrive on participation and the more you break up activity into isolated areas, the less community and participation you get. OT doesn't have enough regulars to support an additional segregation of topics.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

OT is just fine. Politics is on peoples minds and they want to talk about different aspects of it. Those who are tired of it can start new, non political topics or ignore the political ones. The diversity of OT topics is one of its great strengths. We tried segmentation years ago and it did not work. It is pretty clear that if you want your thread to attract comments, you need to post it in OT. The History, Science and the arts subforums are pretty dead when compared to OT. Science has had 6 threads with one or more posts in November; History 15 and Arts 9.

Communities thrive on participation and the more you break up activity into isolated areas, the less community and participation you get. OT doesn't have enough regulars to support an additional segregation of topics.

Please stop slagging A&E. It serves its purpose well for the regulars, who don't want our activities buried under two dozen Trump threads, other political threads, serial threads, pop culture threads (some of which really should be in A&E since they're what that forum was created for), and so on.

 

[W|M]

Remember the Tavern/Chamber[pot]? No thanks

 

[Synobun]

Please stop slagging A&E. It serves its purpose well for the regulars, who don't want our activities buried under two dozen Trump threads, other political threads, serial threads, pop culture threads (some of which really should be in A&E since they're what that forum was created for), and so on.

Stating a fact is not what I'd call "slagging". A&E is an inactive forum when compared to the rest of CFC.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Stating a fact is not what I'd call "slagging". A&E is an inactive forum when compared to the rest of CFC.

It's not as busy, but it's hardly inactive. And yes, I consider the phrase "pretty dead" to be slagging.